NCIS: "Ani L'Dodi, Vi Dodi Li" (Tony/Ziva)
Title: Ani L'Dodi, Vi Dodi Li
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas..
Pairing: Tony/Ziva
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: emotional hurt/comfort
Spoilers: s10e21 "Berlin" (with at least vague references to events leading up to that episode)
Type: Stand Alone
Word Count: 3,662
Summary: What they need is time.
(Post-ep reaction/follow-up to "Berlin", so spoilers for that episode abound. More would be telling.)
Author's Notes:
Please see the end for additional notes and trigger warnings if you've seen the episode and are worried where this might be going.
Thanks bunches and tons to my lovely betas, SweetWaterSong and Ez_as_Pi. You two are fabulous. Any remaining errors are my own.
The title is Hebrew. It translates to "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine," and is from the Song of Songs.
"You should not move me."
She leans over his shoulder, watching as he struggles with the twisted metal and the seatbelt that won't come loose.
"C'mon, c'mon," he repeats over and over, hands a blur of constant movement as he checks first her wrist, then her throat for a pulse. His hands shake, which makes sensation blurry, and he goes back to tugging at the straps holding her in place.
"Tony, let the paramedics do their job. Your head is bleeding quite a bit, you've probably got a concussion, at least."
"Broken ribs," he mutters. "Maybe my collar bone, can't tell. Why aren't you moving? Why aren't you breathing?" As if he realizes what he's just said, and who he's said it to, he looks up at her sharply. She's standing beside him, unbloodied and pristine, just like she looked when she got into the car at the Navy Yard.
"You have a concussion," she repeats. "Perhaps you are hallucinating."
A hand clamps down on his shoulder, pulling him back away from her, both versions of her, and the world spins sharply.
"Sir, can you understand me? Sir?"
The voice sounds far away, and the world goes white around the edges, then everything goes black.
*****
"You're awake!" Abby is the next voice he hears, and she's too loud and too sharp and too enthusiastic and past experience causes him to brace himself as he tries to open his eyes. He's just in time to see her check herself before landing on him, concern all over her face, then she grabs his hand tightly instead. Ziva is standing behind her, a half-smile at the edge of her lips.
He wonders just how bad he looks.
"Not so loud, Abs, please?"
"Sorry. Sorry, I just... you've been out for hours."
Disjointed memories are trickling back, increasing the ache in his head and introducing him to the pain in his chest and the tightness of the tape where they'd wrapped his rib cage. That explains the lack of a hug, then.
Abby's face gets strange then, tight and uncertain, and he watches her swallow around whatever she wants to say.
"Abby. What's wrong?"
"Ziva... she's-"
"She's alive," McGee cuts in quickly, and Tony looks up at him in confusion. She's standing right there, isn't she? Hell, she doesn't even look like she has a scratch on her, and-
"They cannot see me, Tony," Ziva murmurs gently, and she isn't behind Abby anymore, she's standing at the head of his bed with her hand barely brushing his shoulder.
"What do you mean they can't-"
She lays a finger over his mouth and he stills because he can't feel her. Not properly. It's more like he remembers what she feels like, it's the sensation of something barely brushing past his skin.
"Shhhh. The last thing you need is them thinking you've lost your mind, or that you have more injuries to your hard head than just a moderate concussion."
McGee's frowning, and it's then that Tony notices just how worn down he looks. "She's alive, but she's in a coma. Has been since they brought you two in. She had a lot of internal injuries, so they had her in surgery for hours."
"Right now," Abby's voice catches on the words, "they don't know just how bad it is. Or if she'll wake up. Tony, she had bleeding in her brain."
"Brain damage?" He resists the urge to look up at the apparent Ziva hallucination he's got going on.
"They don't know."
This time he does look up into Ziva's eyes.
"I do not know, either. I've been here with you since the crash. That's all I remember."
"You're not real," he mumbles, closing his eyes so he can't see the looks he imagines Abby and McGee would give him for talking to himself.
"I feel real," she retorts.
"No, you don't," he whispers back, and maybe it's the drugs, or maybe just exhaustion, but he lets himself slip back under, this time to sleep.
*****
"I don't think you should be leaving yet," she offers from her perch on his bedside table, and Tony turns to glare at her. He's already had this argument with the doctor, and McGee, but his ribs are taped and his scans are fine, and if he has to sit in that room just thinking about what happened... No. He needs to do something.
"You don't get a vote, ghost-girl," he snaps, then he stops mid-button and realizes what he's just said and can't quite stop the grin. "Oh god. I'm in the middle of Ghost!"
"This is not Ghost, Tony."
"You know, Ducky talks to dead people. He'd look weird in the gold dress though."
"I am not dead, Tony! And you are the one talking to me!"
"If it looks like a duck...," he shoots back and she rolls her eyes at him, but just as suddenly the mood changes. He gets quiet for a long time while he struggles with the last of the buttons and she watches him. He can feel her looking at him in that same sort of shadow sensation that her touch seems to create.
"I don't want you to be dead, Ziva. I'm not ready for you to be gone," he whispers finally, his voice rough and deep and looks intently at his hands rather than up at her face.
"I'm not ready to be gone, either," she admits.
"Don't go walking through any glowing doors until we can get you well again, okay? Promise me?"
"I promise," she whispers back, but it's so faint he isn't sure if he hears it or just wants to.
*****
He stops by her hospital room on his way out, and it's a shock to see her looking so bruised and broken, with tubes and machines hooked up to what seems like every available inch of her. Maybe his brain can't juggle both images at once, but his Ziva-ghost vanishes when he enters the room, and he feels like he's trying to hold his breath until he's back out in the hallway and she reappears.
*****
His first stop is the office, but it doesn't take long for Gibbs to pull them out into the field. He glares at Tony the entire car ride to Georgetown and the apartment connected to the SUV that hit them, but doesn't bother to try to talk him into staying behind.
"No one's been here for a long time," Tony says when they get inside, and runs his hands roughly through his hair in frustration. His head still hurts like a son of a bitch so he regrets doing it, but the pain killers are back in his desk drawer and he doesn't intend to take them. Wanting to stay sharp to help with the case is his excuse, but really he's afraid if he sleeps again or takes something that fuzzes his brain, she'll vanish and never come back.
"Start processing it for evidence," Gibbs barks at everyone in the room. "Anything we find here could help us put the bastard away."
"I do not think this is just Bodnar anymore," Ziva admits quietly when Tony turns away from Gibbs's line of sight.
"Me either."
"There is something else going on at Mossad. Someone arranged to have us both killed."
"They aimed for your side of the car, Ziva. I get the feeling I was just collateral damage." He flips through a stack of folders, but there's nothing useful inside. "We got too close, too fast. Think they're afraid we'll get to Bodnar before they do?"
Ziva nods and leans down beside him to study the contents of a desk. "Which implies that he has something, some intel that they do not wish for us to hear."
"And something concrete enough we'll believe him."
She looks up at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it. We catch Bodnar, alive, it'll go one of two ways. Either he'll clam up, or he'll start spilling his guts and tell us anything and everything he can that he thinks we want to hear or will buy him some time. Guy like that, he'll try to blame anyone and everyone he can think of to shift the attention away from him. We know that. They know we know that."
"Which means they think he has something with enough proof and weight behind it that we will listen."
"Exactly."
*****
"There will be another lead. We are close, I can feel it." They're back at his apartment, finally, and he brushed off Abby and McGee's attempts to stay with him.
Tony raises an eyebrow at her across the kitchen table. "Can't you just twitch your nose and pop in wherever Bodnar is or something? Tell us where he's hiding?"
"It does not work that way, Tony." She pauses for a beat, then says softly, "I can't go anywhere else. I have tried."
"Here?" he asks, looking around his apartment, because they've been all over the place in the last 36 hours.
"With you," she finally explains and he wonders if ghosts can blush or if his eyes are still playing tricks on him.
"Then you really are just a figment of my imagination."
"I don't feel like a figment." Ziva sits stiffly in her chair and he realizes she's twisting her hands in her lap in a very non-Ziva sort of way. He wonders if not being able to really touch or manipulate anything - like a weapon, for instance - is starting to get to her. "You should get some sleep," she finally says, but she's not quite looking at him the same way she was before.
"I don't want to go to sleep." And he doesn't. He doesn't want to dream, he doesn't want to see the accident played over and over again in his mind. He's got a good idea what his dreams are going to look like now that he's got yet another set of images to add to his litany of "ways that Ziva might die"... metal and sirens to layer on top of gun shots and slit throats and pools of blood. It's not a pretty place he goes to when he sleeps.
And she might be gone when he wakes up.
"I don't think I will be going anywhere anytime soon," she offers, and he realizes he said that last part out loud. Or maybe she's reading his thoughts now, he's not sure.
Reluctantly, he lets her lead him to the bedroom, and discovers when he sits down on the bed that he really is exhausted.
"I wish it still smelled like you," he mumbles as he lays his head against the pillow, because suddenly he can't stay awake. "The whole time you were in Israel, the sheets still smelled like you."
"Sleep," she whispers, and he imagines he can feel her hand against his hair. "And do not dream."
*****
He doesn't dream, but for the first few seconds after he wakes up, he thinks that he is. He sees Ziva sitting on the foot of his bed, and for one bright moment it's all a bad dream, the car crash, the hospital, and seeing her in that bed. Then he realizes he's in his room, in his apartment, and not a hotel in Berlin.
She's still there.
"Does this mean you haven't woken up yet?"
"I think so."
He rubs a hand over his face and pushes back the covers. "We'll grab coffee on the way in."
*****
He takes his turn in MTAC, talking to contacts and pulling in leads about where Bodnar might be. He happens the be the one there when Director Elbaz comes on the line. It's his first look at the woman, and somehow, the urge to thank her has gone away. He can't help but think if they'd just worked with them in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have been in that car, at that time.
"Director."
"And you are?"
As first impressions go, it's not great, he knows he still looks awful and has a hell of a bruised face. She, on the other hand, looks like the type that would pleasantly serve you tea and cookies while someone snuck up behind you to stab you in the back. Between that and what Ziva's told him, he's not impressed.
"Senior Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo."
Her eyebrows rise slightly and she takes a longer, more considering glance.
"So you are the one that has such a hold on our Ziva," she comments and god, he's getting tired of that. He's tired of the sense that everyone in Mossad seems to have that they somehow own her, or that she's still a little girl under their control. He sees Ziva tense out of the corner of his eye.
"She's not your Ziva, Director."
Something in the Director's face closes down and she drops the pretense of small talk. "Where is Director Vance? I need to speak with him on a matter of the utmost importance."
"If it's got to do with Bodnar, you can talk to me."
*****
"If I had known, back in Berlin... I might've done things differently."
They're sitting alone down in Autopsy, and the blueish lights make her appear even more ghostlike. Tony's staring at the body of the man that hit them as if he'll just stand back up and start telling him everything he knows. Ducky and Jimmy went home a few hours ago to get some much-needed sleep, and he'd snuck back in because he needed the quiet to think, and a place where he could talk to her without worrying about anyone thinking he'd lost it.
"What do you mean?" he asks softly, and feels his stomach tighten. He's still not sure if this is all in his head or if she's somehow really there, but he can tell by the tone of her voice - it's gotten softer, deeper - that they're about to have one of those conversations. The ones they're both so very good at avoiding having with themselves, let alone one another.
"I have just been thinking about - missed opportunities, I suppose. I was trying very hard not to think about such things because I did not want to be distracted from my goal."
"Getting Bodnar."
"Yes. Now, I wonder if that was the right thing to do. I am more like my father than I thought I was. We have seen what revenge can do to people. I don't want my life to become like his, where I have nothing and no one except vengeance. I want justice for him, and for Jackie, but I do not want that to be the only thing I have left. I was born into a war, I have lived most of my life in one, but I am not ready to die in one. Even one of my own devising."
"So if you'd known that Mossad would come after you," because yes, even if she didn't want to admit it, even if the new Director wasn't aware of it, whatever was going on was most certainly tied to Mossad, "you wouldn't have chased Bodnar down?"
"No. I would still have looked for him, still have gone to Berlin. But there are other things I might've done differently. Things I thought I had time for when it was over, that I wish now I hadn't put off."
"You'll still have time, Ziva." His voice is raw, and his throat closes up on him in the middle of her name. "You're not dead okay? I shouldn't have to tell you that. You're going to be fine, and we'll get him, and then you'll have all the time in the world."
She reaches out to him, her arm stretched over the table between them, but she doesn't quite make contact with his hand. "I hope so. I am not ready to die." But her tone of voice says that she's not so certain.
"You can't. You can't leave me here, alone like this," and there it is. The pain and fear come flooding up from where he's done a damn good job of hiding them for two and a half days now. And as if that's the final crack in the armor, something breaks open inside of him and it all comes spilling out. How he'd thought they had time, too, how he was playing it safe, waiting until everything was just right because damn it, but he didn't want to screw up this time. How it had been okay, because he liked what they were creating, how it felt, that it was something settled and strong and there wasn't a rush.
He wishes he'd rushed, now.
He still isn't sure if she's real or just in his head - maybe that's what makes him say all the things that normally he'd never be able to get out. If she's a hallucination, then it stands to reason she already knows everything that he knows, after all.
Then she starts talking too, and he knows that she must be all in his mind because she's telling him things he'd never expect her to say. About the conversation she had with her father on the morning before he died, and the photo that Tony had fished out of storage. How it had made her wonder just a little bit about the future, too. And they're still standing several feet apart because right now the whole not being able to feel her thing just might be enough to break him once and for all.
His hand slips into his jacket pocket, and he fumbles out the small silver pendant he's been keeping there for weeks. "I found this," he admits, "and couldn't stop thinking about it. About you. So I bought it just in case. Because I hoped that maybe, someday..." he trails off and holds it out. She tries to take it but her hand passes through his and she bends over close so she can see the inscription.
"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li," she recites softly, and it takes her a long time before she looks back up at him. "Tony, this-"
"I know, right? Couldn't get it out of my head," he repeats. "But it wasn't the right time to give it to you. I wasn't even sure if I should. I didn't want to seem like Ray, or, I don't know, scare you off, I guess?"
"I do not scare so easily, Tony," she chides him. "It's beautiful."
"I don't want to lose that chance."
"Neither do I."
******
Tony stares at Bodnar through the reflective glass as Gibbs works him over. It's a minor miracle he's been brought in alive. There'd been a moment, with Bodnar on the floor at the foot of Ziva's hospital bed, when he'd had his gun to his heart, when he could've done it.
Should've done it.
But it was Ziva's voice in his ear - of all people - asking him to stay his hand.
"I need to know what he knows," she'd whispered, and he could've sworn he felt the line of her against his back.
*****
He thought that sitting tied to a chair, just a few inches away from her in a god forsaken desert had been the most he'd ever needed to touch her, but it's nothing compared to how he feels as he watches her listen to what Bodnar has to say. Family secrets and state secrets and covert plots all tangled together like a Gordian knot with a rotten core. Cut open, it bleeds out all over everyone, but Ziva most of all.
Tony tries to keep his face as impassive as he can, he can't not look at her at least out of the corner of his eye (he's getting good at that, looking without appearing to), but of course no one else can see the effect it's having on her. The others are angry, and they understand the implications - they even have an idea how they think she would react to the news, but Tony gets to see it firsthand and it's like Vance's dining room all over again.
She starts to fade, she flickers, then just like that she's gone and Tony grabs the back of the nearby chair hard. He tells himself she left on her own, that she's not gone for good. That it was just too much and she'd needed to do the ghostly equivalent of stepping outside.
When his cell phone starts ringing right after Gibbs's does, he knows it's not true.
*****
Over the years, the hospital has become his least favorite place. He doesn't mind it so much when he's the patient (at least then, he often gets the good drugs, right?) but he's been here too many times to listen to too many doctors tell them all there was nothing else they could do. He's seen too many of the lives around him fall apart in front of a backdrop of institutional blue and beige.
If this is the universe's idea of an apology for all those other times, he'll take it.
She still looks like hell, and he tells her so, hovering near her without touching because she's still bruised and bandaged and he's not sure where it's safe and won't hurt her more. Then she reaches up with a surprisingly strong grip and grabs his wrist, pulling his arm down until his hand is against her cheek. Just like that, it feels like he can breathe again.
He feels her tugging at the fabric of his jacket and he shifts to try to see what she's doing. He remembers, just as her fingers are slipping back out of his pocket, and sees that they're clutched tightly around the charm.
"How did you know-" he starts to ask, then stops. "It was really you. The whole time. You weren't just a dream."
"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li," she repeats. "We still have time."
*****
Additional Notes:
This is absolutely not a character death fic. This was the result of me trying to cope with all of this (i.e., the end of "Berlin"), and what I would love to see happen in a perfect world (which, you know, is kind of what fic is all about, right?)
Ever since I realized that Tony taught himself Hebrew somewhere along the way (because I really doubt that he looked up and pre-meditated the "you are not alone" at the end of Shiva, and that's not the kind of thing you know how to say from just familiarizing yourself with basic "get by" phrases like hello, goodbye, and so on) - I've had the Song of Songs quote running through my head. I've always found it, and the wedding rings using it, beautiful, and it seems to suit them perfectly - both Tony's romantic streak and Ziva's culture and heritage. That he taught himself Hebrew (I assume for her, primarily) just seals the deal for me. But of course, depsite the moment in the car, they're not actually at the "he's been walking around with a ring" point quite yet... but I could see him picking up a pendant, a charm, in a moment of imagination and hope, and then carrying it around as something of a talisman.
And I like the symmetry that Ray offered her a box with nothing inside it, and Tony is carrying around a charm with nothing enclosing it. :D
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas..
Pairing: Tony/Ziva
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: emotional hurt/comfort
Spoilers: s10e21 "Berlin" (with at least vague references to events leading up to that episode)
Type: Stand Alone
Word Count: 3,662
Summary: What they need is time.
(Post-ep reaction/follow-up to "Berlin", so spoilers for that episode abound. More would be telling.)
Author's Notes:
Please see the end for additional notes and trigger warnings if you've seen the episode and are worried where this might be going.
Thanks bunches and tons to my lovely betas, SweetWaterSong and Ez_as_Pi. You two are fabulous. Any remaining errors are my own.
The title is Hebrew. It translates to "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine," and is from the Song of Songs.
"You should not move me."
She leans over his shoulder, watching as he struggles with the twisted metal and the seatbelt that won't come loose.
"C'mon, c'mon," he repeats over and over, hands a blur of constant movement as he checks first her wrist, then her throat for a pulse. His hands shake, which makes sensation blurry, and he goes back to tugging at the straps holding her in place.
"Tony, let the paramedics do their job. Your head is bleeding quite a bit, you've probably got a concussion, at least."
"Broken ribs," he mutters. "Maybe my collar bone, can't tell. Why aren't you moving? Why aren't you breathing?" As if he realizes what he's just said, and who he's said it to, he looks up at her sharply. She's standing beside him, unbloodied and pristine, just like she looked when she got into the car at the Navy Yard.
"You have a concussion," she repeats. "Perhaps you are hallucinating."
A hand clamps down on his shoulder, pulling him back away from her, both versions of her, and the world spins sharply.
"Sir, can you understand me? Sir?"
The voice sounds far away, and the world goes white around the edges, then everything goes black.
*****
"You're awake!" Abby is the next voice he hears, and she's too loud and too sharp and too enthusiastic and past experience causes him to brace himself as he tries to open his eyes. He's just in time to see her check herself before landing on him, concern all over her face, then she grabs his hand tightly instead. Ziva is standing behind her, a half-smile at the edge of her lips.
He wonders just how bad he looks.
"Not so loud, Abs, please?"
"Sorry. Sorry, I just... you've been out for hours."
Disjointed memories are trickling back, increasing the ache in his head and introducing him to the pain in his chest and the tightness of the tape where they'd wrapped his rib cage. That explains the lack of a hug, then.
Abby's face gets strange then, tight and uncertain, and he watches her swallow around whatever she wants to say.
"Abby. What's wrong?"
"Ziva... she's-"
"She's alive," McGee cuts in quickly, and Tony looks up at him in confusion. She's standing right there, isn't she? Hell, she doesn't even look like she has a scratch on her, and-
"They cannot see me, Tony," Ziva murmurs gently, and she isn't behind Abby anymore, she's standing at the head of his bed with her hand barely brushing his shoulder.
"What do you mean they can't-"
She lays a finger over his mouth and he stills because he can't feel her. Not properly. It's more like he remembers what she feels like, it's the sensation of something barely brushing past his skin.
"Shhhh. The last thing you need is them thinking you've lost your mind, or that you have more injuries to your hard head than just a moderate concussion."
McGee's frowning, and it's then that Tony notices just how worn down he looks. "She's alive, but she's in a coma. Has been since they brought you two in. She had a lot of internal injuries, so they had her in surgery for hours."
"Right now," Abby's voice catches on the words, "they don't know just how bad it is. Or if she'll wake up. Tony, she had bleeding in her brain."
"Brain damage?" He resists the urge to look up at the apparent Ziva hallucination he's got going on.
"They don't know."
This time he does look up into Ziva's eyes.
"I do not know, either. I've been here with you since the crash. That's all I remember."
"You're not real," he mumbles, closing his eyes so he can't see the looks he imagines Abby and McGee would give him for talking to himself.
"I feel real," she retorts.
"No, you don't," he whispers back, and maybe it's the drugs, or maybe just exhaustion, but he lets himself slip back under, this time to sleep.
*****
"I don't think you should be leaving yet," she offers from her perch on his bedside table, and Tony turns to glare at her. He's already had this argument with the doctor, and McGee, but his ribs are taped and his scans are fine, and if he has to sit in that room just thinking about what happened... No. He needs to do something.
"You don't get a vote, ghost-girl," he snaps, then he stops mid-button and realizes what he's just said and can't quite stop the grin. "Oh god. I'm in the middle of Ghost!"
"This is not Ghost, Tony."
"You know, Ducky talks to dead people. He'd look weird in the gold dress though."
"I am not dead, Tony! And you are the one talking to me!"
"If it looks like a duck...," he shoots back and she rolls her eyes at him, but just as suddenly the mood changes. He gets quiet for a long time while he struggles with the last of the buttons and she watches him. He can feel her looking at him in that same sort of shadow sensation that her touch seems to create.
"I don't want you to be dead, Ziva. I'm not ready for you to be gone," he whispers finally, his voice rough and deep and looks intently at his hands rather than up at her face.
"I'm not ready to be gone, either," she admits.
"Don't go walking through any glowing doors until we can get you well again, okay? Promise me?"
"I promise," she whispers back, but it's so faint he isn't sure if he hears it or just wants to.
*****
He stops by her hospital room on his way out, and it's a shock to see her looking so bruised and broken, with tubes and machines hooked up to what seems like every available inch of her. Maybe his brain can't juggle both images at once, but his Ziva-ghost vanishes when he enters the room, and he feels like he's trying to hold his breath until he's back out in the hallway and she reappears.
*****
His first stop is the office, but it doesn't take long for Gibbs to pull them out into the field. He glares at Tony the entire car ride to Georgetown and the apartment connected to the SUV that hit them, but doesn't bother to try to talk him into staying behind.
"No one's been here for a long time," Tony says when they get inside, and runs his hands roughly through his hair in frustration. His head still hurts like a son of a bitch so he regrets doing it, but the pain killers are back in his desk drawer and he doesn't intend to take them. Wanting to stay sharp to help with the case is his excuse, but really he's afraid if he sleeps again or takes something that fuzzes his brain, she'll vanish and never come back.
"Start processing it for evidence," Gibbs barks at everyone in the room. "Anything we find here could help us put the bastard away."
"I do not think this is just Bodnar anymore," Ziva admits quietly when Tony turns away from Gibbs's line of sight.
"Me either."
"There is something else going on at Mossad. Someone arranged to have us both killed."
"They aimed for your side of the car, Ziva. I get the feeling I was just collateral damage." He flips through a stack of folders, but there's nothing useful inside. "We got too close, too fast. Think they're afraid we'll get to Bodnar before they do?"
Ziva nods and leans down beside him to study the contents of a desk. "Which implies that he has something, some intel that they do not wish for us to hear."
"And something concrete enough we'll believe him."
She looks up at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it. We catch Bodnar, alive, it'll go one of two ways. Either he'll clam up, or he'll start spilling his guts and tell us anything and everything he can that he thinks we want to hear or will buy him some time. Guy like that, he'll try to blame anyone and everyone he can think of to shift the attention away from him. We know that. They know we know that."
"Which means they think he has something with enough proof and weight behind it that we will listen."
"Exactly."
*****
"There will be another lead. We are close, I can feel it." They're back at his apartment, finally, and he brushed off Abby and McGee's attempts to stay with him.
Tony raises an eyebrow at her across the kitchen table. "Can't you just twitch your nose and pop in wherever Bodnar is or something? Tell us where he's hiding?"
"It does not work that way, Tony." She pauses for a beat, then says softly, "I can't go anywhere else. I have tried."
"Here?" he asks, looking around his apartment, because they've been all over the place in the last 36 hours.
"With you," she finally explains and he wonders if ghosts can blush or if his eyes are still playing tricks on him.
"Then you really are just a figment of my imagination."
"I don't feel like a figment." Ziva sits stiffly in her chair and he realizes she's twisting her hands in her lap in a very non-Ziva sort of way. He wonders if not being able to really touch or manipulate anything - like a weapon, for instance - is starting to get to her. "You should get some sleep," she finally says, but she's not quite looking at him the same way she was before.
"I don't want to go to sleep." And he doesn't. He doesn't want to dream, he doesn't want to see the accident played over and over again in his mind. He's got a good idea what his dreams are going to look like now that he's got yet another set of images to add to his litany of "ways that Ziva might die"... metal and sirens to layer on top of gun shots and slit throats and pools of blood. It's not a pretty place he goes to when he sleeps.
And she might be gone when he wakes up.
"I don't think I will be going anywhere anytime soon," she offers, and he realizes he said that last part out loud. Or maybe she's reading his thoughts now, he's not sure.
Reluctantly, he lets her lead him to the bedroom, and discovers when he sits down on the bed that he really is exhausted.
"I wish it still smelled like you," he mumbles as he lays his head against the pillow, because suddenly he can't stay awake. "The whole time you were in Israel, the sheets still smelled like you."
"Sleep," she whispers, and he imagines he can feel her hand against his hair. "And do not dream."
*****
He doesn't dream, but for the first few seconds after he wakes up, he thinks that he is. He sees Ziva sitting on the foot of his bed, and for one bright moment it's all a bad dream, the car crash, the hospital, and seeing her in that bed. Then he realizes he's in his room, in his apartment, and not a hotel in Berlin.
She's still there.
"Does this mean you haven't woken up yet?"
"I think so."
He rubs a hand over his face and pushes back the covers. "We'll grab coffee on the way in."
*****
He takes his turn in MTAC, talking to contacts and pulling in leads about where Bodnar might be. He happens the be the one there when Director Elbaz comes on the line. It's his first look at the woman, and somehow, the urge to thank her has gone away. He can't help but think if they'd just worked with them in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have been in that car, at that time.
"Director."
"And you are?"
As first impressions go, it's not great, he knows he still looks awful and has a hell of a bruised face. She, on the other hand, looks like the type that would pleasantly serve you tea and cookies while someone snuck up behind you to stab you in the back. Between that and what Ziva's told him, he's not impressed.
"Senior Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo."
Her eyebrows rise slightly and she takes a longer, more considering glance.
"So you are the one that has such a hold on our Ziva," she comments and god, he's getting tired of that. He's tired of the sense that everyone in Mossad seems to have that they somehow own her, or that she's still a little girl under their control. He sees Ziva tense out of the corner of his eye.
"She's not your Ziva, Director."
Something in the Director's face closes down and she drops the pretense of small talk. "Where is Director Vance? I need to speak with him on a matter of the utmost importance."
"If it's got to do with Bodnar, you can talk to me."
*****
"If I had known, back in Berlin... I might've done things differently."
They're sitting alone down in Autopsy, and the blueish lights make her appear even more ghostlike. Tony's staring at the body of the man that hit them as if he'll just stand back up and start telling him everything he knows. Ducky and Jimmy went home a few hours ago to get some much-needed sleep, and he'd snuck back in because he needed the quiet to think, and a place where he could talk to her without worrying about anyone thinking he'd lost it.
"What do you mean?" he asks softly, and feels his stomach tighten. He's still not sure if this is all in his head or if she's somehow really there, but he can tell by the tone of her voice - it's gotten softer, deeper - that they're about to have one of those conversations. The ones they're both so very good at avoiding having with themselves, let alone one another.
"I have just been thinking about - missed opportunities, I suppose. I was trying very hard not to think about such things because I did not want to be distracted from my goal."
"Getting Bodnar."
"Yes. Now, I wonder if that was the right thing to do. I am more like my father than I thought I was. We have seen what revenge can do to people. I don't want my life to become like his, where I have nothing and no one except vengeance. I want justice for him, and for Jackie, but I do not want that to be the only thing I have left. I was born into a war, I have lived most of my life in one, but I am not ready to die in one. Even one of my own devising."
"So if you'd known that Mossad would come after you," because yes, even if she didn't want to admit it, even if the new Director wasn't aware of it, whatever was going on was most certainly tied to Mossad, "you wouldn't have chased Bodnar down?"
"No. I would still have looked for him, still have gone to Berlin. But there are other things I might've done differently. Things I thought I had time for when it was over, that I wish now I hadn't put off."
"You'll still have time, Ziva." His voice is raw, and his throat closes up on him in the middle of her name. "You're not dead okay? I shouldn't have to tell you that. You're going to be fine, and we'll get him, and then you'll have all the time in the world."
She reaches out to him, her arm stretched over the table between them, but she doesn't quite make contact with his hand. "I hope so. I am not ready to die." But her tone of voice says that she's not so certain.
"You can't. You can't leave me here, alone like this," and there it is. The pain and fear come flooding up from where he's done a damn good job of hiding them for two and a half days now. And as if that's the final crack in the armor, something breaks open inside of him and it all comes spilling out. How he'd thought they had time, too, how he was playing it safe, waiting until everything was just right because damn it, but he didn't want to screw up this time. How it had been okay, because he liked what they were creating, how it felt, that it was something settled and strong and there wasn't a rush.
He wishes he'd rushed, now.
He still isn't sure if she's real or just in his head - maybe that's what makes him say all the things that normally he'd never be able to get out. If she's a hallucination, then it stands to reason she already knows everything that he knows, after all.
Then she starts talking too, and he knows that she must be all in his mind because she's telling him things he'd never expect her to say. About the conversation she had with her father on the morning before he died, and the photo that Tony had fished out of storage. How it had made her wonder just a little bit about the future, too. And they're still standing several feet apart because right now the whole not being able to feel her thing just might be enough to break him once and for all.
His hand slips into his jacket pocket, and he fumbles out the small silver pendant he's been keeping there for weeks. "I found this," he admits, "and couldn't stop thinking about it. About you. So I bought it just in case. Because I hoped that maybe, someday..." he trails off and holds it out. She tries to take it but her hand passes through his and she bends over close so she can see the inscription.
"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li," she recites softly, and it takes her a long time before she looks back up at him. "Tony, this-"
"I know, right? Couldn't get it out of my head," he repeats. "But it wasn't the right time to give it to you. I wasn't even sure if I should. I didn't want to seem like Ray, or, I don't know, scare you off, I guess?"
"I do not scare so easily, Tony," she chides him. "It's beautiful."
"I don't want to lose that chance."
"Neither do I."
******
Tony stares at Bodnar through the reflective glass as Gibbs works him over. It's a minor miracle he's been brought in alive. There'd been a moment, with Bodnar on the floor at the foot of Ziva's hospital bed, when he'd had his gun to his heart, when he could've done it.
Should've done it.
But it was Ziva's voice in his ear - of all people - asking him to stay his hand.
"I need to know what he knows," she'd whispered, and he could've sworn he felt the line of her against his back.
*****
He thought that sitting tied to a chair, just a few inches away from her in a god forsaken desert had been the most he'd ever needed to touch her, but it's nothing compared to how he feels as he watches her listen to what Bodnar has to say. Family secrets and state secrets and covert plots all tangled together like a Gordian knot with a rotten core. Cut open, it bleeds out all over everyone, but Ziva most of all.
Tony tries to keep his face as impassive as he can, he can't not look at her at least out of the corner of his eye (he's getting good at that, looking without appearing to), but of course no one else can see the effect it's having on her. The others are angry, and they understand the implications - they even have an idea how they think she would react to the news, but Tony gets to see it firsthand and it's like Vance's dining room all over again.
She starts to fade, she flickers, then just like that she's gone and Tony grabs the back of the nearby chair hard. He tells himself she left on her own, that she's not gone for good. That it was just too much and she'd needed to do the ghostly equivalent of stepping outside.
When his cell phone starts ringing right after Gibbs's does, he knows it's not true.
*****
Over the years, the hospital has become his least favorite place. He doesn't mind it so much when he's the patient (at least then, he often gets the good drugs, right?) but he's been here too many times to listen to too many doctors tell them all there was nothing else they could do. He's seen too many of the lives around him fall apart in front of a backdrop of institutional blue and beige.
If this is the universe's idea of an apology for all those other times, he'll take it.
She still looks like hell, and he tells her so, hovering near her without touching because she's still bruised and bandaged and he's not sure where it's safe and won't hurt her more. Then she reaches up with a surprisingly strong grip and grabs his wrist, pulling his arm down until his hand is against her cheek. Just like that, it feels like he can breathe again.
He feels her tugging at the fabric of his jacket and he shifts to try to see what she's doing. He remembers, just as her fingers are slipping back out of his pocket, and sees that they're clutched tightly around the charm.
"How did you know-" he starts to ask, then stops. "It was really you. The whole time. You weren't just a dream."
"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li," she repeats. "We still have time."
*****
Additional Notes:
This is absolutely not a character death fic. This was the result of me trying to cope with all of this (i.e., the end of "Berlin"), and what I would love to see happen in a perfect world (which, you know, is kind of what fic is all about, right?)
Ever since I realized that Tony taught himself Hebrew somewhere along the way (because I really doubt that he looked up and pre-meditated the "you are not alone" at the end of Shiva, and that's not the kind of thing you know how to say from just familiarizing yourself with basic "get by" phrases like hello, goodbye, and so on) - I've had the Song of Songs quote running through my head. I've always found it, and the wedding rings using it, beautiful, and it seems to suit them perfectly - both Tony's romantic streak and Ziva's culture and heritage. That he taught himself Hebrew (I assume for her, primarily) just seals the deal for me. But of course, depsite the moment in the car, they're not actually at the "he's been walking around with a ring" point quite yet... but I could see him picking up a pendant, a charm, in a moment of imagination and hope, and then carrying it around as something of a talisman.
And I like the symmetry that Ray offered her a box with nothing inside it, and Tony is carrying around a charm with nothing enclosing it. :D